By Jack Crowe and Audrewy Fahlberg in National Review
The Heritage Foundation task force that President Kevin Roberts is citing as evidence of his commitment to fighting antisemitism is rapidly coming undone.
The co-chairs of the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism sent an email to members on Tuesday afternoon listing the demands they have made of Roberts, including that he delete the video statement he issued last week in which he defended Tucker Carlson’s decision to give a friendly interview to notorious antisemite Nick Fuentes, apologize to Christian and Jewish Israel supporters who were offended by the statement, and hire a visiting fellow to address antisemitism among young right-wingers, among other demands.
“If we are not able to come to an agreement soon, the relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the Task Force will be irrevocably harmed,” warns the letter to Roberts from task force co-chairs Pastor Luke Moon, Dr. Victoria Coates, Ellie Cohanim, and Pastor Mario Bramnick, which was obtained by National Review.
Roberts’s Friday video prompted a wave of public criticism from Heritage employees, who took to social media to accuse him of betraying conservative principles in attacking Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” bent on “sowing division.” Roberts responded later that day on social media by forcefully condemning Fuentes’s racist, sexist, and antisemitic worldview — but the internal criticism continued privately in an email thread, obtained by National Review, comprised of antisemitism task force members discussing whether to resign immediately or wait until Roberts had a chance to apologize and retract his video statement.
The task force’s co-chairs emailed the group on Monday revealing that they had a constructive conversation with Roberts and urging irate members to hold off on resigning to give the embattled president a chance to correct course.
“We had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Roberts today. He shared his apology about how he has handled this issue, and was very open to our counsel. Because of this we are asking the members of the taskforce to give us additional time to work out the practical steps moving forward. We are also going to reach out to you for your own counsel. Over the next several days we will continue to work closely with Kevin and the leadership of the Heritage Foundation on this matter.”
Around the same time that email was sent, Roberts was taking the stage at Hillsdale College to apologize for his failure to more forcefully condemn antisemitism in his initial statement — but also to continue pushing back on what he views as attempts to “cancel” Carlson.
Roberts began the speech by touting the work Heritage has done to combat antisemitism under Project Esther, a campaign the storied think tank launched on the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack to root out the antisemitism that’s exploded on the American Left in recent years. But even as he was speaking, members of the task force that lead Project Esther were drafting resignation statements.
Religious Freedom Institute fellow Ian Speir tendered his resignation Tuesday morning due to what he argued was Roberts’s insistence on casting criticism of Carlson as an attempt at “cancelation” in his speech at Hillsdale.
“At the urging of the Co-Chairs, I was prepared to defer this decision at least until we could get important questions answered about the future of Heritage and the conservative movement,” Speier wrote in his resignation letter, which he shared on X. “But then Roberts made his statement at Hillsdale last night. It is a strategic non-apology that doubles down on “loyalty” to Tucker Carlson, muses about welcoming groypers and the groyper-curious into the movement, and continues to gaslight everyone about “cancelation” when that clearly isn’t the issue. It is the elevation of blind loyalty and a thirst for power above principle—the very opposite of historical American conservatism. I cannot tread this path with you. The stakes for our country and for our Jewish friends are simply too high, too existential.”
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Executive Vice President for the Coalition for Jewish Values, also announced that his organization is resigning from the task force in a Tuesday letter.
“Until such time as there is a complete reversal of Mr. Roberts’ position, or, alternatively, his resignation is accepted by the Heritage Board of Directors, CJV cannot be part of a program, event, or effort claiming to combat antisemitism in which the Heritage Foundation is a sponsoring partner,” Menken wrote in his resignation letter, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Menken expanded on his letter in an interview with National Review Tuesday morning in which he predicted his resignation would be followed by many others.
“As far as Roberts’s handling of it, it’s disappointing. He doesn’t recognize the central issue to us. We’re certainly not a venomous coalition, certainly not raising an alarm over a nonexistent problem,” he said. “This is not Chicken Little. It’s not about the sky falling. It’s about antisemitism rising. And fundamentally, he said he will always stand with Tucker Carlson. …When you have a relationship with a public figure who uses his public platforms to incite hatred—that should be crossing a line.”
The task force co-chairs are also demanding that Roberts condemn the “antisemitic content” Carlson has made without crossing into “calling for his cancellation or an end to your friendship.” The task force leaders also propose having members of the task force host Shabbat dinners with Heritage interns and junior staff to facilitate “conversations on Judaism and the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
After Roberts’s Monday evening speech, Thomas McKenna, editor of the Hillsdale Collegian, asked whether there was anything Carlson could do that would cause Heritage to distance itself from him.
“We don’t forsake friends,” Roberts said.
“That doesn’t mean we’re endorsing every word of the content — or even a lot of the content,” he added.
Cover Image: Nara Public Domain Archive, PDM 1.0
Also published in World Israel News